Ethan Hawke has praised his Strange Way of Life co-star Pedro Pascal, calling him a “very attractive and extremely talented man”.
The film, directed by Pedro Almodóvar, is a 30-minute gay Western short film that finally had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this week. It is Almodóvar’s second film in the English language, after 2020’s Human Voice.
It follows Pascal’s character Silva, who travels across the desert on horseback to visit his friend Sheriff Jake (Hawke), for the first time in over two decades. While the initial mood of their reunion is a celebratory one, conflict arises over Silva’s desire to revisit the past, and Jake’s wish to keep it buried.
During a Q&A session in Cannes, Hawke had the highest compliments for Pascal when asked about what it was like to act alongside the Game of Thrones star.
“I like to be wanted, you know I don’t care. If it happens to be a very attractive, extremely talented man, all the better,” Hawke said, The Hollywood Reporterreports.
He continued by explaining what appealed to him about his character, Jake.
“What I loved about the sheriff, about Jake, is there’s a way that we are and there’s a way we want to be, and they’re often not the same,” he said. “It creates a conflict whether you’re straight or whether you’re gay. There’s ways that we wish we were and we often go through our lives pretending to be that way and it creates cracks in us and it creates lies in us.
“The process of maturing is having less of those cracks and less of those lies. And I felt Jake was a great character because of that.”
Speaking of the chemistry and love in the film, Hawke added: “The second you take out a camera and you start photographing people, there’s some act of love that is happening where you are saying that these people are important and worthy of time. And the things they’re feeling are important and the things they’re thinking are important and worthy of us all to consider.
“So, for me, it’s kind of always about love in some capacity. What moves us is what we want, what we love. Desire makes the world spin around.”
Elsewhere at Cannes, Johnny Depp got emotional as his new film Jeanne du Barry received a seven-minute standing ovation on Tuesday (16 May).
Other highly anticipated films at the festival this year are German filmmaker Wim Wenders’s Anselm, Pham Thien An’s debut feature Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, and Martin Scorsese’s Close Your Eyes.
Strange Way of Life premiered at Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday (17 May). It is set to be released on 26 May.
